AUGUSTA, Maine - A group of Maine civil engineers has again given the state's infrastructure a grade of C minus.
In its 2016 report card, the Maine Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers graded 14 different infrastructure categories, ranging from airports and roads to public schools and state parks.
The lowest scores, in the D range, went to passenger transportation, roads, dams and levees, and wastewater.
The organization's president, Lynn Farrington, says the highest grades in this year's survey were B minuses, awarded to energy and Maine's ports and waterways. She says those categories are seeing a good deal of financial investment, a lot of that due to private investment.
"The goal of the report card was not necessarily to paint a doom and gloom, you know everything's terrible," Farrington says. "It's more to draw attention to those areas that are not doing so well or trending down and kind of send up a red flag before things get too terribly bad."
She says Maine needs to focus attention on infrastructure and find sustainable solutions and proactive investment across all categories.
Maine also got a C minus in the society's last infrastructure report card, released in 2012.
